Page:National Lyrics.pdf/326

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310
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.


There's one that pale beside thee stands,
More true than all thy mountain bands!
She will not shrink in doubt and dread,
When the balls whistle round thy head:
Nor leave thee, though thy closing eye
No longer may to her's reply.

Oh! many a soft and quiet grace
Hath faded from her form and face;
And many a thought, the fitting guest
Of woman's meek religious breast,
Hath perished in her wanderings wide,
Through the deep forests by thy side.

Yet, mournfully surviving all,
A flower upon a ruin's wall,
A friendless thing whose lot is cast,
Of lovely ones to be the last;
Sad, but unchanged through good and ill,
Thine is her lone devotion still.